The Latin American Left and the Challenge of Self-Criticism. Interview with Magdalena López

Abstract

In recent years, the Latin American left has avoided undertaking a critical and reflective reading of its own processes of autocratization, particularly in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In this interview, Dr. Magdalena López, a Venezuelan researcher affiliated with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Centro de Estudos Internacionais at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), whom I thank for her time and willingness to participate, reflects on the testimony of her mother, historian and scholar Margarita López Maya, who lived through the rise of authoritarian chavismo and the reconfiguration of the twenty-first-century Latin American left, including the role played by intellectuals and academic organizations, such as CLACSO and LASA, in legitimizing the chavista project, as well as the left's difficulty in engaging in honest self-criticism in the face of the systematic violation of human rights and the authoritarianism carried out in its name. Finally, she offers a reflection on ideological identity, intellectual responsibility, and the limits that should mark the end of one's backing of a given political project.